Month: September 2016

Every Friday we send out a newsletter to more than 8000 Angel Investors around the world, once in a while I post some news here so you maybe can see the value of subscribing. Here you have some of the posts I have been reading the last couple of days and hope you find some relevant stories. Sign up for Angel Investor Startup Digest today.

The most exciting experience this week was getting contracted to a speaker at Wolves Summit next month. This is the fourth edition of the biggest multinational startup event in Central and Eastern Europe. It focuses on networking and has a goal to build a bridge between investors, corporations, and promising startups.

Did you know that 500 Startups is shouting down their activity in Oslo and that Sean Percival is leaving? I am not sure what’s boiling here, but I keep you posted. Anyhow, earlier this week Are Traasdahl founder of Tapad launched his idea setting up an early stage fund of 1,2 billion USD and got standing ovations for his initiative.

As a curator, I want feedback on what you think should be the focus of this newsletter, and I promise your voice will be heard. Please send me the exciting news, deals, tools, etc. and if you are on Twitter feel free to connect at @vikinangels.

– Angels love the thrill of the hunt. We like learning how entrepreneurs are going to change the world or which is the new Unicorn that will go public and bring a 100X return. Perhaps this is why many stories about early-stage investing focus on the first part of angel investing – finding good deals, negotiating good terms, and due diligence.

– EQUITY Gap, a Scottish business angel syndicate, has reported strong investment activity in the first half of 2016. The syndicate has completed investment deals in include Insignia Technologies, Synaptec, Appointedd, Shotscope and Vert Rotors. The syndicate has rapidly grown from 15 original founders to 100 members, completing over 50 rounds of funding, since 2010.

– One of the big concerns about investing in a startup is the lack of liquidity, which means once you put in money, you’re pretty much locked in until a “liquidity event” occurs. Most angels want an outsize return on their investments, because this is a high-risk asset class, and you invest in it because you expect to get a high return in exchange for taking on that additional risk.

– In the previous post of this series, we described what financial modeling is and why it is important for startup founders to build their own models from scratch. Today, we’ll begin by diving into how to practically start building a financial model.

– Signia Venture Partners has closed its second fund at $85 million to lead early-stage deals in emerging tech startups mostly in and around San Francisco. For the unfamiliar, Signia is typically the first money in and the lead investor in the companies it backs, writing $1-2 million in seed stage deals or $2-8 million in later stage rounds.

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Today we learned that 500 Startups are shooting down their activities in Norway, Sean Percival leaves, and the rest of the team is moving to Sweden. They are one of the leading venture companies in the world and has invested more than 1.6 billion in approximately 1,400 companies.

Sean Percival, Source: 500 Startups

– Sweden has a much greater appetite for risk, and they are much better at marketing, commercialization, and internationalization, says Sean Percival.

– When I tried to raise money for our 15 million USD fund in Norway, there were very few who understood how venture capital works. They did not understand the mechanisms and they did not understand how they got the money back.

For every conversation I had, I started on the minus side, and had to spend time just to get to the starting line, and then I have to continue to get them to invest, he said.

It is tragic that 500 Startups not got underway in Norway. What Sean says, pinpoint our problems related to culture and lack climate for cooperation across national borders inside Scandinavia.

What worries me most is that Norway can have branding issues in the environment in Silicon Valley. It’s like a little duck pond and rumors going fast. This for sure a downturn and emphasizes once again the importance of tax incentives for investors in Norway. I assume that key politicians realize the seriousness now. As entrepreneurs, we must also put pressure on the government.

Norway must have conditions that are competitive and that can secure that startup projects have an opportunity to get financing. I think it’s unreasonable that we give a lot of grants from Innovation Norway, only for the next turn see the company flag out to get investors.

Also, we must all demand that our politicians have a vision for this country? The last thing we need is more commissions and committees. We need action!